Breaking ground at the University’s new School of Engineering
Leading academics have for the first time, measured Great Britain's hourly local demand for natural gas, providing insights into the gas consumption that helps keep the country warm1. Research published today by the UK Energy Research Centre2 sheds new light on the scale and variability of local gas demand, highlighting the particular challenge of providing energy for heating and hot water throughout the winter. Action on heat. Switching from fossil gas heating to low-carbon alternatives is necessary to meet the UK's climate change targets, a point made by the Committee on Climate Change in their latest report to parliament3. The decarbonisation of heat is regarded as one of the toughest challenges the country faces in its low-carbon transition, not least because of the ubiquity and ease of use of existing natural gas heating systems. By consolidating gas demand data from Great Britain's local gas networks over a period of 11 months4, this research highlights the hourly variation in local gas consumption, revealing immense swings in demand throughout the day. The data covers the cold weather event popularly termed the 'Beast from the East'5, providing further insights into demand at times of energy system stress.
